Vasily Blokhin

Vasily Blokhin (7 January 1895-3 February 1955) was a Major-General of the Soviet Red Army and the chief executioner of the NKVD during the Great Purge.

Biography
Vasily Blokhin was born on 7 January 1895 in Suzdal, Vladimir Governorate, Russian Empire. He joined the Cheka in 1921 and was involved in the wetwork of the Cheka and NKVD, including assassinations, torture, intimidation, and executions. Blokhin rose to become the commandant of Lubyanka prison, and he oversaw mass executions in addition to being the gunman in the executions of Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov, Lev Kamenev, Nikolai Bukharin, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, and the other leaders of the "Old Bolsheviks" or Trotskyists. In April 1940, he was also responsible for the Katyn massacre, in which 7,000 Polish Army prisoners of war were executed by the Soviet government. He became the most prolific executioner in history, and he retired after Joseph Stalin's death in 1953. He sank into alcoholism and went insane after Stalin died, and Blokhin apparently committed suicide in February 1955.